The Hidden Child (23 page)

Carina didn’t reply, just bowed her head as a sign of surrender. It had been a long time since she’d had the energy to fight Kjell. The day when he gave up on her, on them, she had given up on herself.

When Kjell was back in his car, he drove a few hundred metres and then parked. He pressed his forehead on the steering wheel and closed his eyes. Images of Erik Frankel flickered through his mind. He thought about what he’d found out about the man. The question was: what should he do with the information?

Chapter 18
Grini, Outside Oslo, 1943

The worst part was the cold. Never being able to get warm. The damp that sucked up any warmth and wrapped around his body like an icy, wet blanket. Axel curled up on the bunk. The days were so long in his solitary cell, but he preferred the gloominess to the frequent interruptions. The beatings, interrogations, all the questions pummelling him like a steady downpour that refused to stop. How could he give them answers when he knew so little? And whatever he did know, he would never tell them. They’d have to kill him first.

Axel ran his hand over his scalp. There was only stubble there now, and it felt rough under his palm. They had given all the prisoners a shower and shaved their heads as soon as they arrived. Then they were dressed in uniforms of the Norwegian Guard. When he was caught, Axel knew at once that this was where he’d end up: in the prison located twelve kilometres outside of Oslo. But no one could have prepared him for what life was like here – the unfathomable terror that filled all hours of the day, the tedium, and the pain.

‘Food.’ There was a clattering outside his cell, and the young guard set down a tray outside the bars.

‘What day is it today?’ asked Axel in Norwegian. He and Erik had spent nearly all their summer holidays with their maternal grandparents in Norway, and he spoke the language fluently. He saw this guard every day and always tried to engage him in conversation, for he craved human contact. But usually he received only the briefest of answers. Just like today.

‘Wednesday.’

‘Thanks.’ Axel forced himself to smile. The boy turned to leave. Dreading the moment he would be left once again to his solitude and the cold, Axel attempted to detain the guard by tossing out another question:

‘What’s the weather like outside?’

The boy stopped. Hesitated. He glanced around, then he came back to Axel’s cell.

‘It’s overcast. Really cold,’ he said. Axel was struck by how young the boy looked. He must have been about the same age as Axel, maybe a couple of years younger, but given how Axel was feeling these days, he assumed that he looked considerably older – just as old on the outside as on the inside.

The boy again took a few steps away.

‘Cold for this time of year, isn’t it?’ His voice broke, making the innocuous remark sound very strange. There was a time when he’d looked upon such meaningless chit-chat as a waste of time. Right now it was a lifeline, a reminder of the outside world that seemed more and more distant.

‘Yes, you might say that. But it can get really cold in Oslo this time of year.’

‘Are you from around here?’ Axel hurried to ask the question before the guard decided to leave.

The boy hesitated, uncertain whether to reply. He glanced around again, but no one was in sight or within earshot.

‘We’ve only been here a couple of years.’

Axel decided on another question. ‘How long have I been here? It feels like an eternity.’ He laughed but was startled by how harsh and unfamiliar his laugh sounded. It had been a long time since he’d had anything to laugh about.

‘I don’t know if I should . . .’ The guard tugged at his uniform collar. He seemed not to feel comfortable yet in the compulsory attire. Over time he’d get used to it, Axel thought. He would learn to accept both the uniform and the way the prisoners were treated. It was human nature.

‘What difference will it make if you tell me how long I’ve been here?’ coaxed Axel. There was something extremely upsetting about being in this timeless state. Without clocks, dates, or weekdays around which he could order his life.

‘About two months. I’m not really sure.’

‘About two months. And this is Wednesday. With overcast skies. That’s good enough for me.’ Axel smiled at the boy and received a cautious smile in return.

When the guard was gone, Axel sank down on his bunk with the tray on his lap. The food left a lot to be desired. The same slop every day. Potatoes fit for pigs, and disgusting stews. But that was undoubtedly part of their strategy to break down the prisoners. Listlessly he dipped the spoon into the grey mess in the bowl, but his hunger finally forced him to lift it to his mouth. He tried to pretend that he was eating his mother’s beef stew, but that just made matters worse, since his thoughts then strayed to things that he’d forbidden himself to think about: his home and his family, his mother and father and Erik. Suddenly even his hunger wasn’t strong enough; nothing could make him eat. He dropped the spoon in the bowl and leaned his head back against the rough wall. He could see them all quite clearly: his father with the big grey moustache that he meticulously combed every night before going to bed; his mother with her long hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, and with her glasses perched on the very tip of her nose as she sat crocheting in the light from the reading lamp in the evenings. And Erik. Probably in his room with his nose in a book. What were they all doing? Were they thinking about him right now? How had his parents reacted to the news that he’d been taken prisoner? And Erik, who was so often silent, keeping his thoughts to himself. His brilliant intellect could analyse texts and facts with impressive speed, but he had a hard time showing his emotions. Once in a while, out of sheer cussedness, Axel would give his brother a big bear hug, just to feel his body go rigid with discomfort at being touched. But after a moment Erik would always relent; there would be a few seconds where he would relax and give in before snarling ‘Let me go’, and tearing himself away. Axel knew his brother so well. Much better than Erik would ever believe. He knew that Erik sometimes felt like an outsider in the family, that he thought he couldn’t compete with Axel. And now things were probably going to be even worse for him. Axel knew that concern for him was going to affect Erik’s daily life, that his brother’s place in the family was going to be even more diminished. He didn’t even dare think about how things would be for Erik if he died.

Chapter 19

‘Hi, we’re home!’ Patrik closed the door and set Maja down on the floor in the hall. She immediately headed off, so he had to grab her jacket to stop her.

‘Just a minute, sweetie. We have to take off your shoes and jacket before you go running to see Mamma.’ He got her undressed and then let her go.

‘Erica? We’re home!’ he shouted. No reply, but when he stopped to listen, he heard a clacking sound from upstairs. He picked up Maja and went up to Erica’s workroom, setting the little girl down on the floor.

‘Hi. So this is where you are.’

‘Yes, I’ve rattled off quite a few pages today. And then Anna came over and we had coffee.’ Erica smiled at Maja and held out her arms to her daughter. Maja toddled over to press a wet kiss on Erica’s lips.

‘Hi, sweetheart. What have you and Pappa been doing today?’ She rubbed her nose against Maja’s, and the little girl gurgled with delight. Eskimo kisses were their speciality. ‘You’ve been gone a long time,’ said Erica, shifting her attention back to Patrik.

‘Well, I had to jump in and do a little work,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘The new officer seems great, but they hadn’t really thought through all the angles, so I drove over to Fjällbacka with them to make a house call, which gave us a lead so we were able to pinpoint the two-day time frame when Erik Frankel was most likely murdered . . .’ He trailed off mid-sentence when he saw Erica’s expression, realizing that he should have given it more thought before he opened his mouth.

‘And where was Maja while you “jumped in to do a little work”?’ asked Erica with ice in her voice.

Patrik squirmed. This would be a good time for the smoke alarm to go off. But no such luck. He took a deep breath and launched right in.

‘Annika took care of her for a while. At the station.’ He couldn’t understand why it sounded so bad when he said it out loud. Until now it hadn’t even occurred to him that it might not be such a good idea.

‘So Annika took care of our daughter at the police station while you drove out on a job for a couple of hours? Am I understanding this correctly?’

‘Er . . . yes,’ said Patrik, searching frantically for a way to turn the situation to his advantage. ‘She had a great time. She had a big lunch, and then Annika went for a walk with her so she fell asleep in the pushchair.’

‘I’m sure that Annika did a super job as the babysitter. That’s not the point. What makes me upset is the fact that we agreed you would take care of Maja while I worked. It’s not that I expect you to spend every minute with her until January; of course we’ll need babysitters once in a while. But I think it’s a bit much to start leaving Maja with the station secretary so you can run off on a job after only one week of paternity leave. What do you think?’

Patrik wondered for a second whether Erica’s question was purely rhetorical, but when she seemed to be waiting for him to answer, he realized that wasn’t the case.

‘Well, now that you put it that way, I . . . okay, it was a stupid thing to do. But they hadn’t even checked to see if Erik had . . . and I got so involved that . . . All right, it was stupid!’ he concluded his confused excuse. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stick straight up.

‘From now on. No working. Promise me. Just you and Maja. Now give me a thumbs up.’ He stuck up both thumbs, trying to look as trustworthy as he could.

Erica let out a big sigh and got up from her chair. ‘Okay, sweetie, it doesn’t look as if you’ve suffered any. Shall we forgive Pappa and go downstairs to fix dinner?’ Maja nodded. ‘Pappa can cook carbonara for us, to make up for today,’ said Erica, heading downstairs, balancing Maja on her hip. Maja nodded eagerly. Pappa’s carbonara was one of her favourite dishes.

‘So did you reach any conclusions?’ asked Erica later as she sat at the kitchen table watching Patrik fry bacon and boil water for the spaghetti. Maja was installed in front of the TV watching
Bolibompa
, so the adults had some peace and quiet to themselves.

‘He most likely died sometime between the fifteenth and the seventeenth of June.’ Patrik moved the bacon around in the pan. ‘Damn it!’ Some of the grease spattered his arm. ‘That hurts! Good thing I don’t fry bacon naked.’

‘You know what, darling? I agree. It’s a good thing you don’t fry bacon naked.’ Erica gave him a wink, and he went over to kiss her on the lips.

‘So I’m your “darling” again, eh? Does that mean I’m out of the doghouse?’

Erica pretended to think about it for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t go that far, but you might be soon. If the carbonara is really good, I might reconsider.’

‘So how was your day?’ asked Patrik, returning to his cooking. He cautiously lifted out the pieces of bacon and placed them on a paper towel to absorb the grease. The trick to making a good carbonara was really crisp bacon; there was nothing worse than limp bacon.

‘Where should I begin?’ said Erica, sighing. First she told him about Anna’s visit and her problems as the stepmother to a teenager. Then she recounted what had happened when she went to see Britta. Patrik put down the spatula and stared at her in surprise.

‘You went over to her house to ask her questions? And the old woman has Alzheimer’s? No wonder her husband yelled at you. I would have too.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot. Anna said the same thing, so I’ve heard enough criticism about that, thank you very much.’ Erica sulked. ‘I didn’t actually know about her condition when I went over there.’

‘So what did she say?’ asked Patrik, putting spaghetti into the boiling water.

‘You realize that’s enough for a small army, right?’ Erica said when she saw that he’d put almost two-thirds of the packet into the pot.

‘Am I cooking dinner or are you?’ said Patrik, pointing the spatula at her. ‘Okay, so what did she say?’

‘Well, first of all it seems that they spent a lot of time together when they were young, Britta and my mother. Apparently they were a close-knit group, the two of them and Erik Frankel and somebody named Frans.’

‘Frans Ringholm?’ asked Patrik as he stirred the spaghetti.

‘Yes, I think that’s his name. Frans Ringholm. Why? Do you know him?’ Erica gave him a quizzical look, but Patrik just shrugged.

‘Did she say anything else? Has she had any contact with Erik or Frans? Or Axel, for that matter?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Erica. ‘It didn’t seem as though any of them had kept in touch with each other, but I could be wrong.’ She frowned, rerunning the conversation in her mind. ‘There was something . . .’ she said hesitantly.

Patrik stopped stirring as he waited for her to go on.